Sunday, May 31, 2020

Ne’er Cast a Clout





This must be one of my daughters great shots of a Kite. Jacqueline Rackham Photography.


Ne’er Cast a Clout

My old dad used to say that to me as a child and he was referring to the wearing of my liberty bodice.  Ne’er cast a clout till May be out. However, he was talking about the May flower or Hawthorn tree blossom, that comes out a bit earlier in May. There seems to be some general confusion and I can see that, with the changeability of our fine English weather. I think it makes more sense that my dad was correct, because it has been full blown summer for a couple of weeks now and I am only wearing one level of clothing when we go out for our run, even though we start running at a little after 5 am.


Today is the last day of the merry month of May and it is fair to say that it has been far from merry in a lot of ways. Fingers, eyes and legs crossed, that June will not be busting out all over with much more of the dreaded Corona Virus. That depends I think, on us all staying on the sensible side and not rushing back to what ever our normal lives were. We are still not clear of Covid 19, there is each day an alarmingly high daily death list and that should not be ignored.

Steve and I are staying firmly on the side of caution and still going for our run at the first light of alternate days. On the other hand during the summer months, that is the best time of day to be out running your legs off to keep fit enough for the sport we look forward to competing in as soon as possible. We had a really lovely 8 mile run again this morning and it was sheer joy to be up and around at a time when the rest of the world is not around to spoil it. Mind you the ground in the woodlands is rock hard now because of the lovely weather. There will be a hose pipe ban before you can say ‘Knife’.

Our run today was about two minutes slower that our best run that was recorded two days ago, but that was undoubtedly due to that fact that I had to stop to make an adjustment to my sports bra straps because I was having ‘bounce’ problems due to a change in underwear. Sorry for sharing that with the world but it does matter when you are recording all your times and beside that; this is my diary folks! Read at you peril.

Once indoors again we had a five minute sit down with a cup of coffee before getting into an hour of Qigong. We are both enjoying these sessions that we started to drift into from the Tai Chi we had been doing. I am not trying to sell it to anybody else at all but it seems to suit us well
.
We both like the Balance, Mind and Body combination and the breathing exercises and the general peace of the practice. I see that it is not something that some of my friends would be interested in but I feel that something peaceful like this can and has been helpful to a maniac fidget like me. I am always thinking about a million things and have far too many interests by the standards of some. This gathers me in to a time of restoration that is most useful. 


After all the attention to training and calming this morning I had a note in my diary to go out and tidy up the front garden because it had got out of hand with the burst of warm days and so it badly needed a good weeding and general bringing back to order. This was not a massive job since all there is of my front garden is a three foot deep, by ten wide, slither of earth in front of the bay window on the street side of the house. The two large plant tubs and small rose bed the other side of the door complete the front set, taking not much more that half an hour to bring back to order. Steve does not do gardening.


I made a big mistake last evening after dinner. My sewing project had my full attention and when Steve asked if there was anything I had in mind to watch on TV for the two hours remaining before bedtime loomed, I muttered “You chose darling”. That was a big mistake and broke my usual rule that, ‘Steve should not ever pick the movie’. When we did sit down I knew immediately that I had made the wrong call. He chose a quite new film. ‘Extraction’. It starred Chris Hemsworth as some over armed brute of an ex SASR operative, turned black ops mercenary, charged with a new job; to rescue the kidnapped son of an imprisoned crime lord. I won’t bother with any comment other than; What a load of tosh that was!  Full on bloke stuff, helicopter crashes, assorted vehicle chases, explosions every two seconds and everybody dies in a horrible way.  It made John Wicks seem like a cuddly pussy cat. 

The only thing I did like was the name of one of the Bollywood repertory players in the cast.
Randeep Hooda, what a great name that is.
My maiden name was Peace by the way.
My mothers maiden name was Chance.


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